The last time Warren Gatland had a dig at New Zealand, one of their national newspapers put a cartoon of him dressed as a clown on the front page of their sport section. That was in November, when Gatland said he was “embarrassed” that the New Zealand Herald had run a picture of the Australia coach, Michael Cheika, wearing a red nose and a yellow ruff around his neck.
So, of course the paper then gave Gatland the very same treatment. “It was a bit of a lesson for me,” Gatland says. “I was really disappointed with that. I was really upset them turning me into a clown.” He pauses, and offers just a hint of a grin. “They could have at least made me a happy clown.”
Gatland is expecting worse in the summer. “Those are the challenges for the management,” he says. “There is always that potential for someone to look for a negative story or a negative angle or there is a sting being done. We have got to be prepared for those sorts of things.”
Of course, rugby is the national sport in New Zealand, so the tourists will be under that much more scrutiny there than they are used to in Europe. There is a reason that so many players have been caught misbehaving there in recent years. And it will be all the more intense on a Lions tour when, as Martin Johnson has just said, it “feels like the whole rugby world is watching”.
The key thing, Gatland says, is for the Lions to make sure they do not give the press any easy targets. That, he explained, was one of the many mistakes Clive Woodward made in 2005. “There were lots of things that made it easy for the journalists,” Gatland says, speaking at an event organised by the Lions sponsor Land Rover. A short list would include the fact that Woodward tried to ban his squad from referring to New Zealand as the All Blacks, his decision to use Alastair Campbell as a communications director, and the way in which Campbell then tried to spin the first Test so that all the attention was on Tana Umaga’s tackle on Brian O’Driscoll. On top of all that, the Lions also pulled out of some of the community events they were supposed to attend.
The Lions did not lose only every Test match on that tour, they lost a lot of respect, too. Gatland has spent a lot of time since repairing the damage, first as assistant to Ian McGeechan in South Africa in 2009, then as head coach in Australia in 2013. He wants the Lions to finally put it right this summer. “We are trying to go there and mend some stuff from 2005. We want to engage with the community, to play some good rugby, we want to get the public on our side,” he says. “We want to be great tourists.”
Part of that, he adds, is that “we have got to be aware there could be some negatives thrown at us”. Just like the clown cartoon. The key “is how we deal with it and how we respond to it”.
Aside from all this, there is the little matter of what happens on the pitch. And here, Gatland was encouraged by Ireland’s victory over New Zealand in November. The great thing about it, he says, is that it reminded everyone that the All Blacks can be beaten. “Even though as coaches we say it, sometimes players don’t believe us. They are human. You put them under pressure and they will make mistakes.”
He hopes the Irish players will carry confidence from that result into the Lions tour. “Hopefully the players that were involved in that can express those sentiments in terms of what was right for them, and have that confidence and self-belief that can go through the rest of the team.” Nothing wins respect, after all, like winning matches.
